I could count to a million if I had the time or space.
There are two main counting systems. The first is just plain cardinal numbers.
Ichi, Ni, San, Shi (or Yon), Go, Roku, Shichi (or Nana), Hachi, Kyuu (of Ku), Juu.
You might use them for Maths. So you would say, "San kakeru ni wa roku" (3x2=6)
The second is for counting objects etc.
Hitotsu, Futatsu, Mittsu, Yottsu, Itsutsu, Muitsu, Nanotsu, Yattsu, Kokonotsu, Tou.
I know those first numbers(ichi,ni san,++)but what are those last ones?
I always wondered why Japanese made it so complicated... Three writing systems (one of them not even "exact"), two counting systems... Does it have historical or cultural reasons?
There are several countries that uses two writing-systems/ languages...like my country...it depends on where you live.
Like in my country we have one for those located in the west and one for those on the east-side.
I am interested in Japanese too, but my top priority is Persian, in which I have some knowledge of.
Don't for get LogLan, the Logical Language.
http://www.loglan.org/
There's also the language that has only like seven letters, which can be represented as colors, sounds, words (do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti), I don't think they mention it in the wikipedia entry, but there are hand gestures to that scale, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solresol
(Prof. McWhorter didn't like Solresol, but I liked the idea of it.)
Most of my Serbo-Croatian / Bosnian is untranslatable, if you know what I mean
I used to work with
all Bosnian guys for like 7 years. I remember one day, a truck driver came in. He was Bosnian, too.
I thought I'd been magically transported to Bosnia. Hey. At least I could get some decent coffee, that way...
I've only got two left out of my original 12. (Bosnians, that is, on my shift)
I personally find it difficult to learn to -speak- another language. Reading and writing is different, that's no problem, it's just the verbal parts I have trouble with. I'd love to learn German at some point, and I'd like to become truly fluent in French someday as well. I sometimes crave hearing foreign languages. On my TAC Les Mis CD there's this version of "Do You Hear The People Sing" that's in a bunch of different languages, I love listening to that one. And I sing along as best I can, though I know I'm butchering the crap out of it, lol
They tryied to teach me german in grade one, chinese in grades 3-5, and japanese in grades 6-7, I had trouble enuf with english, I would so love to learn spanish, I here it's entirely phonetic (who's idea was it to spell phonetic with a 'p')
Not the old traditional stuff - unless you like it then. But listening to German Neue Deutsche Härte, Japanese visual kei, German industrial, Japanese game music...